Tears In Heaven
by merlinmercury
Summary: There isn't much of a view, just an asphalt parking lot, but the smells and sounds are refreshing—the gentle crinkling patter of the rain, the smell of wet concrete and wood and dirt heavy in the air. Fresh off the back of an almost-apocalypse, it's nice. Cleansing. God knows Sam's felt like he's needed cleansing for a long time now.


Lucifer has been sitting on a bench outside the motel for so long that Sam almost wonders if he's asleep. _Almost_, because of course angels, let alone archangels, don't need to sleep. He's been perfectly stationary for two hours by the time Sam finally decides to go out and ask him what's up. Things are still tentative between them; Lucifer could still decide to end the world at any moment—but Sam believes him a little more each time he swears he doesn't plan to anymore.

When he reaches the bench, Sam can see that Lucifer is indeed awake, head slightly raised to the sky. It's raining, just lightly, and the drops have gathered on his face, rolling over the sores burnt into his vessel's skin. When Lucifer doesn't acknowledge his presence, Sam sits down silently beside him and focuses on the feeling of the rain, the way it clumps the strands of his hair together and plasters stragglers to his forehead.

There isn't much of a view, just an asphalt parking lot, but the smells and sounds are refreshing—the gentle crinkling patter of the rain, the smell of wet concrete and wood and dirt heavy in the air. Fresh off the back of an almost-apocalypse, it's nice. Cleansing.

God knows Sam's felt like he's needed cleansing for a long time now.

"I wish I could take my wings out to wash them," Lucifer says, out of nowhere. He sounds... longing. Sam knows that feeling better than most, but he has a feeling Lucifer knows it better than anyone at all.

"Why can't you?" Sam asks.

"This vessel is already crumbling around me," Lucifer answers, head still tilted up to the sky, eyes shut now. "The surge of power would exacerbate the damage too much. That and it would probably cause an electrical storm. I only want to feel the rain."

Sam remembers the way that Dean had described his first encounter with Cas. Cas, who didn't have nearly the juice that Lucifer does.

He nods. "I like the rain too."

"It never stood out much to me before, amongst all my Father's creations," Lucifer says, and maybe it's just Sam's mind realising all over again exactly what creature he's talking to, but he sounds so _old_. "However, I found that I missed it in particular."

It's an odd thought at first, but it makes perfect sense that it wouldn't rain in hell—not water, anyway—that damnation would be empty of clear rivers or anything to drink or bathe in. Sam still can't really imagine hell; but he doesn't have to go there and experience it to know he doesn't want to. He's seen it in Dean's eyes, heard it in his voice.

"I forgot what it was like," says Lucifer. "What anything other than hell was like. Anything other than desolation and darkness and burning, screams and hollow silence at once. I took it as my kingdom because it was all that was left for me—but I do not want hell on earth. I would be mad to fight for that."

Sam asks before he can think better of it, "What _do _you want, then?"

Lucifer continues staring quietly for a long moment, and Sam's almost sure he isn't going to answer by the time he speaks again.

"I want to feel the rain," Lucifer says simply. Then, "For the thousands of years I was locked away—years made countless by the passing of time in hell—I expected that I would return to paradise one day, whether by invitation or by force. Expected that I _could _return. But being here now... in hell it is impossible to retain any sort of perspective. Away from that, now, I can see what I am, what I became. You think this vessel looks broken, but my true form is... darkened. Tainted, twisted, no longer perfect. I cannot go back to paradise; it would be against my very own reasoning; I do not deserve to be with my Father any more, just as Adam and Eve did not. And so, I just want to feel the rain."

Sam's not sure what exactly to say to most of that. How do you reply when the devil confesses his guilt to you? Are you supposed to reassure him? Agree? Lucifer's sounding an awful lot like Dean right now—too much for Sam's liking—so it's probably not the best time to bring up the fact that his dad's been unreachable for a long while.

Sam thinks he gets it to some degree, though. He understands feeling like you're unworthy. He's essentially under house arrest right now, while Dean and Cas are out tying up loose ends and ensuring that nobody else jumpstarts the apocalypse now that Lucifer's out of the race. Dean's monitoring the GPS on his phone to make sure it stays in the motel room, and every so often he'll call just to check on him. It doesn't have to be said that if Sam's not around to answer it there'll be trouble. The demon blood is pretty much out of his system now—excepting those few drops that have always been there and always will be—but he's still far from recovered. The awful hallucinations have stopped, sure, but he still craves it; the rush most of all, something heady amongst the rest of his sorry life, powerful amongst the rest of his helplessness. He misses the taste, _god_—at first it had felt so wrong to drink _blood _but now there's nothing that can replace the tang of metal and sulphur, not when he knows what it can do for him. He misses the texture, warm and sticky or cold and thin. The simple action of drinking, too, is a part of it. At first he'd filled his flask with whiskey as a stand-in, but after a few nights of blink drunkenness Dean had put a stop to that. Sam still has no idea whether he'll ever be able to hunt demons without remembering flashes of what it was like to lick and bite at Ruby's skin, without wondering if he could do the same to whoever they're killing. At this rate, he's not sure he'll ever hunt demons with Dean again simply because he and Cas seem to be having such a good time without him.

"You hunger," Lucifer says softly. There's no need to elaborate.

"How—?" Sam starts.

"I know the look. In hell, I saw it often; demons would give their blood to still-human souls in order to speed their transformations. Of course, as you know, the addiction itself can be a potent form of torture if the supply is withdrawn."

God, does Sam know. It's the main thing holding him back from another relapse, the memories of agony, the shame and loneliness magnified to levels far too great for him to bear. There's his brother holding him back too, obviously, and Castiel whose disdain is masked less effectively than Dean's, but all of that mostly just makes him wonder whether it's really worth trying. They're happier alone together than they are with him around, and sometimes Sam thinks he could just disappear, have the blood consume him again the way he wantsto let it, and it wouldn't be as hard on Dean to let him go now that he's got Cas.

So yeah, it's just the threat of returning to the hell of withdrawal that really holds him back. Dean had shoved him up against the wall of a motel hundreds of miles back, pressed his forearm tight across Sam's throat and told him that, so help him, he _would _find Sam if he ever went off the reserve again, he would hunt him down and lock him in Bobby's panic room every damn time he lost his way, and that was a promise. Sam's been threatened by Dean before, but only brother to brother. This had felt like Dean warning a monster he'd be back for him if he killed again. Sam had known forever, objectively, that Dean could be terrifying, but he'd never experienced it quite like that before, never actually managed to wear through all Dean's brotherly affection to the bone.

"I do regret that it was necessary for my escape," Lucifer says. "And I regret that it is necessary for me now."

Sam's lived around Dean long enough to know an underspoken apology when he hears one.

He nods, says, "Me too."

Sometimes Sam swears he can smell the blood on Lucifer. Obviously Lucifer's still drinking the stuff, judging by the fact that Nick's body is still mostly in one piece. Sam hasn't seen him doing it, though, and he's grateful for that. He can't smell it right now, which might be thanks to the wet, rainy scents of everything around them.

"Can I ask you something, Sam?" Lucifer hums, and actually turns to face him. There's an almost tentative curiosity in the grey-blue of his eyes.

"You're never hesitated before. So long as the answer doesn't have to be Yes, then go ahead."

Lucifer looks down at the ground now, where the rain is pooling in a dip in the asphalt.

"I have heard the whispers of my Father's absence," he murmurs, "and seen the way heaven operates now. All is not right, I know that much." He moves one foot forward to the puddle so that the toe of his shoe dips under the water. "What is there left, if there is no paradise? Is all hope false?"

Sam huffs out a surprised laugh at that, but it sounds bitter.

"Maybe," he says honestly, because he's not sure anymore either. He'd put his hopes in heaven too, before the first time he'd met Castiel and Uriel. He'd been so eager to meet the angels that stood as proof that the goodness he'd taken on faith was real. What they'd proven was that the things left to people's imaginations were always kinder than the reality.

"I think the only way to do this, to do life, is to stop searching for something big and perfect, something wholly pure."

Lucifer's looking up at him again, eyebrows raised as if to say, _Then what?_

"It has to be the little things," Sam continues. "Individual moments of happiness, particular relationships, small victories—look at the world as a whole and you'll see one big broken mess, but if you look closer you'll see there are still moments that make it worthwhile. I think we have to come to terms with the fact that we don't have to be perfect to be good, just like we don't have to be unbreakable to be strong. Neither of us is going to be perfect, but that doesn't have to mean there's nothing worthwhile that we can be."

It occurs to Sam that maybe he needed to hear this just as much as the fallen archangel sitting beside him.

"Compromise," says Lucifer, like the word is distasteful but he's fighting not to show it.

Sam thinks that's a start.


End file.
